Tuesday, December 30, 2008

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wokyou would never see him doing such a thing,tossing the dry snow over a mountainof his bare, round shoulder,his hair tied in a knot,a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the wordfor what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?Is this not implied by his serene expression,that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,one shovelful at a time.We toss the light powder into the clear air.We feel the cold mist on our faces.And with every heave we disappearand become lost to each otherin these sudden clouds of our own making,these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.This is the true religion, the religion of snow,and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snowas if it were the purpose of existence,as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear drivewayyou could back the car down easilyand drive off into the vanities of the worldwith a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,me with my commentaryand he inside his generous pocket of silence,until the hour is nearly noonand the snow is piled high all around us;then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milkand bring cups of hot chocolate to the tablewhile you shuffle the deck.and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyesand leaning for a moment on his shovelbefore he drives the thin blade againdeep into the glittering white snow.

Monday, December 29, 2008

I ask but one thing of you, only one,That always you will be my dream of you;That never shall I wake to find untrueAll this I have believed and rested on,Forever vanished, like a vision goneOut into the night. Alas, how fewThere are who strike in us a chord we knewExisted, but so seldom heard its toneWe tremble at the half-forgotten sound.The world is full of rude awakeningsAnd heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,Yet still our human longing vainly clingsTo a belief in beauty through all wrongs.O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

Friday, December 26, 2008

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.And the eyes of those two Indian poniesDarken with kindness.They have come gladly out of the willowsTo welcome my friend and me.We step over the barbed wire into the pastureWhere they have been grazing all day, alone.They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happinessThat we have come.They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.There is no loneliness like theirs.At home once more,They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,For she has walked over to meAnd nuzzled my left hand.She is black and white,Her mane falls wild on her forehead,And the light breeze moves me to caress her long earThat is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.Suddenly I realizeThat if I stepped out of my body I would breakInto blossom.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

One night in the dark I phone for a taxi. Immediately a taxi crashes through the wall; never mind that my room is on the third floor, or that the yellow driver is really a cluster of canaries arranged in the shape of a driver, who flutters apart, streaming from the windows of the taxi in yellow fountains...

Realizing that I am in the midst of something splendid I reach for the phone and cancel the taxi: All the canaries flow back into the taxi and assemble themselves into a cluster shaped like a man. The taxi backs through the wall, and the wall repairs...

But I cannot stop what is happening, I am already reaching for the phone to call a taxi, which is already beginning to crash through the wall with its yellow driver already beginning to flutter apart...

Monday, December 22, 2008

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyondany experience,your eyes have their silence:in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,or which i cannot touch because they are too nearyour slightest look will easily unclose methough i have closed myself as fingers,you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first roseor if your wish be to close me, i andmy life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,as when the heart of this flower imaginesthe snow carefully everywhere descending;nothing which we are to perceive in this world equalsthe power of your intense fragility:whose texturecompels me with the color of its countries,rendering death and forever with each breathing(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands